Maybe it's time to free advertising from the need to represent the entirety of the brand idea and recognise that other disciplines are capable of doing this in a richer and more rewarding way. In particular, for many brands it's their online experience that should be delivering the big brand idea in all its technicolour glory. Advertising, whether offline or digital, is always sharper when it has latched onto a specific business problem rather than wafting around conjuring up beautiful brand worlds.

The bad news for ad agencies would be the decline of the set-piece brand ad as the discipline got back to the job of selling. Seeing advertising recast as the new below-the-line discipline is unlikely to be popular in Soho.

On the other hand, the good news for ad agencies is that few of the brand's other business partners can frame the big idea in the first place. And this remains the most serious challenge for standalone digital agencies in the era of the big brand idea.

Digital may be one of the very few marketing disciplines that can cope with the enormous bandwidth of today's ideas, but unless those agencies have the intellectual and creative firepower to conceive of the idea, they'll struggle to usurp the traditional ad agency as the primary brand partner.

Iím pretty sure Belinda Goldsmith (Reuters) meant to say the yanks living in the USA, not the ones living abroad. At least I hope so.

Surfing the net has become an obsession for many Americans with the majority of U.S. adults feeling they cannot go for a week without going online and one in three giving up friends and sex for the Web.

A survey asked 1,011 American adults how long they would feel OK without going on the Web, to which 15 percent said a just a day or less, 21 percent said a couple of days and another 19 percent said a few days.

Only a fifth of those who took part in an online survey conducted by advertising agency JWT between Sept 7 and 11 said they could go for a week.

"People told us how anxious, isolated and bored they felt when they are forced off line," said Ann Mack, director of trend spotting at JWT, which conducted the survey to see how technology was changing people's behavior.

"They felt disconnected from the world, from their friends and family," she told Reuters.

The poll, released on Wednesday, found the use of cell phones and the Internet were becoming more and more an essential part of life with 48 percent of respondents agreeing they felt something important was missing without Internet access.

More than a quarter of respondents -- or 28 percent -- admitted spending less time socializing face-to-face with peers because of the amount of time they spend online.

It also found that 20 percent said they spend less time having sex because they are online.

Cell phones won out over television in a question asking which device people couldn't go without but the Internet trumped all, regarded as the most necessary.

"It is taking away from offline activities, among them having sex, socializing face-to-face, watching TV and reading newspapers and magazines. It cuts into that share," said Mack.

"I don't suppose their partners are too pleased about it.

"Mack said a clear trend to emerge from the survey was the increasing need for mobility with people no longer satisfied with just broadband access from home and wanting hand-held devices like iPhones and BlackBerrys.

JWT, whose parent company is WPP, has come up with a new advertising category for people whose lives are so tied up with new technology.

"We are calling them 'digitivity denizens,' those who see their cell phones as an extension of themselves, whose online and offline lives are co-mingled and who would chose a Wi-Fi connection over TV any day," said Mack.

Today, the world lost a maestro. Luciano Pavarotti died today at his home in Modena. He was 71.

When K and I lived in NYC, we saw him perform several times at the Met. He is the most incredible, passionate and gifted singer I have ever heard. There is nothing like his voice. He filled the concert hall like no other. It resonated. It went through me. It moved me to tears. I will miss him.

As Om writes, "We are slowly leaving digital litter all over the web, and some day it is going to cause problems."

That said, we all make choices, and one of the big choices we've made over the past 10 years is to not pay for stuff online. But we all pay, one way or another. Increasingly, we pay with information and data instead of cash. You want Facebook? Don't want to pay $9.99/month to get it? Well, ask yourself this: How do you expect Facebook to stay in business? Makes the idea of data gathering and the use of personal information a bit easier to understand, doesn't it?

A N I M O T O: the end of slideshowsAnimoto, a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos using patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design. Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and

One of the many pleasant surprises during our trip to Italy was discovering Beirut.

Sounds funny, right?

Wondering around behind the Piazza Navona, Katja and I went into a shop where they were playing Beruit. I didn't know them, but I liked the track they were playing. Turns out it was called "Postcards from Italy" ... Go figure.

Beirut were one of the largest surprise hits of 2006 receiving widespread acclaim for its innovative combination of Balkan and pop melodies. Even more surprising was that it was the work of one 19-year-old kid, Zach Condon, and done almost completely in his bedroom with Pro Tools. This autumn Beirut return to the Roundhouse following the release of their new album The Flying Club Cup- a notable shift in sound from Gulag. Their live set is a glorious sweep of music, striking in its emotional content and stunning in its scope.

They're a bit strange. "Gulag Orkestar" is a gypsy-esque pop extravaganza. You can listen to them on their official site or on MySpace. You've been warned. :-)

Hi all. I'm back in London after a nice couple weeks in Bella Italia. Full details and photos sooner or later, I promise. I'm tan, recharged and ready. Here are a few stray links from pre-Italy departure that never made it onto the blog.

Facebook *is* opening up (Scripting News)Dave Winer is tracking some new features being released by Facebook that debunk the theories that the company is focused on building a completely closed silo of user data and news.